palimpsest
a parchment or the like from which writing has been partially or completely erased to make room for another text.
something that has a new layer, aspect, or appearance that builds on its past and allows us to see or perceive parts of this past: Most of what we actually see when we view any culture is a historical palimpsest, with traces of former times.Today's towering Romanesque-Gothic structure is a palimpsest, the result of numerous additions and reconstructions.Memory is a palimpsest that is continually being written over, but never perfectly so.
Origin of palimpsest
1Other words from palimpsest
- pal·imp·ses·tic [pal-imp-ses-tik] /ˌpæl ɪmpˈsɛs tɪk/ adjective
Words Nearby palimpsest
Dictionary.com Unabridged Based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
How to use palimpsest in a sentence
Can you talk about how the palimpsest informs the structure of your novel?
In a figurative way, palimpsest refers to an object or place that reflects its own history.
Which, in such cases—the act or the utterance, the gesture or the text—is the palimpsest of other?
The palimpsest of memory recalled with intensest vividness the Christian teachings of his childhood.
The Catacombs of Rome | William Henry WithrowShe longed to penetrate below the surface and decipher the strange palimpsest of human life.
The Daughters of Danaus | Mona Caird
What else than a natural and mighty palimpsest is the human brain?
This shows that naturally, and without violent agencies, the human brain is by tendency a palimpsest.
You know perhaps, masculine reader, better than I can tell you, what is a palimpsest.
British Dictionary definitions for palimpsest
/ (ˈpælɪmpˌsɛst) /
a manuscript on which two or more successive texts have been written, each one being erased to make room for the next
(of a text) written on a palimpsest
(of a document) used as a palimpsest
Origin of palimpsest
1Collins English Dictionary - Complete & Unabridged 2012 Digital Edition © William Collins Sons & Co. Ltd. 1979, 1986 © HarperCollins Publishers 1998, 2000, 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2009, 2012
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